Bush's Mood Swings

Buy beleaguered, overworked White House aides enough drinks and they tell a sordid tale of an administration under siege, beset by bitter staff infighting and led by a man whose mood swings suggest paranoia bordering on schizophrenia.

They describe a President whose public persona masks an angry, obscenity-spouting man who berates staff, unleashes tirades against those who disagree with him and ends meetings in the Oval Office with “get out of here!”

Daryl- The bicycle hobby is not new. Remember last yeay he showed up with a gash on his head? Well he said he slipped on a puddle while bike riding in Crawford; it had not rained there for fourteen days. Or was it a pretzel?

Reminds me a little about the contemporary (and later debunked) reports about Hitler frothing at the mouth and chewing on the rugs. Or why not the rumours about Saddam Hussein feeding opponents into the paper shredders. They weren't insane in that sense.

I expect for most of us, if we were in a position that required us to make decisions involving whether people live or die, our reactions would be of seriousness and an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
On of the scarier things about Bush is, he thinks being able to have people killed is fun. One of the perks of the job.

This is a troll baiting post if ever I have seen one...
While this description is one some lefties, myself included, would love to be proved out true, it won't be.
If it IS true, it will be covered up, just like anything else that would seem to taint our dear leader...
If it is FALSE, then the wrong wingers will win again by saying it was unfounded character assassination...
Can't win attacking the anointed one.

I tend to agree with Johnny. a) As he says, this sort of thing is what is guarded the closest. b) Capitol Hill Blue has been running similar stories about Bush's mental state for ages, and is not regarded as a particularly reliable source. I'm inclined to agree with the thrust of the stories, from the various odd behaviours he has exhibited, but I can't give any credibility to the specific stories themselves.

Now if this isn't a classic case of priming the scandal pump, what is?
Tell me, TalkLeft, how many drinks would I have to buy the people you work with before they started telling sordid stories about you? How many of those stories would be true and how many would be partial or total fabrications? How many would be based on the fact that you beat them in court? How many would be based on the fact that you got the plum client they were hoping to land?
The very fact that an item begins with "Buy enough drinks...." should be reason to discount everything else in it. Drunks are usually not given much credibility, for good reason; they're drunk!

Of course we know from Bush's National Guard days that, when the going gets tough, he flakes out, starts hitting the hard stuff (cocaine, not just booze), and lights out for Alabama.
So if Bush tried to kill himself, or had a nervous breakdown, I wouldn't be completely surprised. Undoubtably the man is in way over his head.

Just as the media shielded the public from FDR's disablility by never showing his wheel chair, today's so-called news gathering services refuse to print pictures of Bush in his straitjacket.
Seriously, if this came from any source other than Capitol Hill Blue, I might run off looking for confirmation, but....

This is one area of Bush that we can't successfully attack. The one and only thing Bush has going for him is his personality. No one would ever believe this, and to be frank, most leaders have moments of anger, anyway.
I have a cousin who works in the White House, and he has only good things to say about our president. So, I'm guessing this story is not true.
We don't need it anyway...Bush has enough flaws for us to focus on.

Hmmm. He sounds a lot like most every boss I've ever had...and a lot like my house when we're late getting out the door. Personally, I'm stunned, yes stunned, to hear that being president of a country and fighting a war is stressful.

Bush set a record by being the first president to go five years without using his veto power.
I think that there was a misprint in the article:

"We're pretty close to a parliamentary government," says G. Calvin Mackenzie, professor of government at Colby College in Watervillle, Maine, referring to Congress's close alignment with the executive branch. "We don't have much recent history with that."

Parliamentary should have read Paramililitary.
Fascist=psycopath seems a more likely equation.

Mr. Bush's propensity for anger, obscenity, and vindictiveness have been adequately documented in the past. During his father's administration, he once famously accosted journalist Al Hunt in a restaurant as Hunt dined with his family. Time Magazine revealed his sudden outburst of profanity against Saddam.
None of this is news. It's just spectacularly told.

A year ago, this web site discovered the White House physician prescribed anti-depressants for Bush. The news came after revelations that the President’s wide mood swings led some administration staffers to doubt his sanity.
Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.
“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”

Anybody know anything about Dr. Justin Frank and his book mentioned above?
I’m inclined to think that this story has, at the very least, been largely overblown by Capitol Hill Blue, but sometimes there are real grains of truth to be found even in the worst forms of propaganda.
I’m a recovering alcoholic too and like the author of the article, I have always thought that Bush was what AA describes as a “dry drunk,” i.e., someone who may be sober, but who still retains all of the anger and personal problems that drove them to alcohol in the first place.

The whoe crowd seeme psyco. Bolton is legendary for his outbursts, and regarding the second time Cheney was thrown out of Yale fellow students reveal it was for throwing bricks down at people from the top of a Yale bldg. Evidently he was a 'mean drunk'. Within the context of psycopathic mental cases it is no wonder that they took us into a illegal war without international support and continue to tell us that things are going well over there.
Francis Fukuyama, a neocon from way back, and signer of PNAC, has broken ranks with the out of control nut cases running our country. He even voted for Kerry, remarking:

"I don't like Kerry particularly as a politician," he reveals, "but it seemed to me that President George Bush had presided over a policy that wasn't very successful -- the Iraq war -- and he shouldn't be rewarded for that... But then I think the accountability mechanism does take a long time to work itself out and if the policy comes to be seen in the next three years as a total failure, then I think that Republicans, not just President Bush himself, but Republicans themselves will pay a very heavy price."

DA - Thanks for telling us all we ever wanted to know about carpet eating. I was really, yes really, impressed.
Lab quotes:

“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching

So Dr Frank diagnosed him by "watching," but never examining. Lab, how can you offer such nonsense without at least indicating it was an attempt at humor?
BTW - So I guess you agreed with Senator Frist's diagnosis of Traci?

Those of you in the reality based community just don't understand Bush. As an aid to Bush once explained "we create our own reality." Apparently, Bush created his own reality when it came to Iraq. As a government official recently explained ""We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

The man has COMMITTED GENOCIDE. He has killed 130,000+ civilians, abetted the study of torture, reinitiated the nuclear arms race, ignored grave warnings of an attack needed by him, exposed US spies to their enemies, underdeployed the military in Afghanistan and in Iraq, getting tens of thousands of soldiers maimed for life, and stolen both elections in order to do it.
I should hope he is a psychopath, with that record.
But let's look on the plus side for a moment.
OK, that was short.

Sarc- What if 'he' killed just one, no problem? What if it were your sister? Or your chlid? What do you think the your "Creator" thinks about numbers. Does your creator believe in natural selection, so that civilian deaths of heathens are OK? You are sounding a bit callous here, extra bcause you are using the your 'creator' as a cudgel. Our heritage....baloney. what about the native americans. Your religous symbols are not interesting to me and do not belong on things called ours.

Scrubbed is not 'debunked.' You haven't debunked anything. HOW do you think 15 permenent airbases can be kept in a sovereign Iraq? No answer from you, even after all these weeks. No mention of them by Bush, who is on drooling vacation #50.
I can't PROVE that Kissinger said what he was reported to have said (news being what it is), but his words actually reference a strategy that matches the ODD facts, while you (and Bush) fail to mention or explain those airbases, and how it is that the builders of those bases, at great cost, expect to keep them.
As for the 128,000 family members reported killed by the recent scientific survey -- do you own Googling. While you're at it, check out the legal meaning of 'Genocide.' Because you're soaking in it.

I think you're mixing threads Squeaky. I'm only commenting on PIL's numbers here.
I can find no source that even approaches PIL's claims. His numbers are 100% to 200% inflated, depending on what source you trust. If PIL thinks so little of human life that the actual numbers of civilian dead are not enought to make his point, I fell sorry for him.

sarcastic,
I think Paul was wrong about the number of civilian casualties (his source was probably the Lancet report in October 2004) but this isn't about your concern for an accurate count of civilian casualties, is it?
Why defend Bush when it is becoming so much easier to pick off some stray incorrect fact from a blogger. It must be hard to be a Bush apologist when you have government officials saying that our Iraqi policy has been based on "unreality."
Since you can't or won't defend Bush, lets change the subject.

"but this isn't about your concern for an accurate count of civilian casualties, is it?"
Actually, JH, my "concern" is for people who "bend" the truth to support their agenda.
By all means have an opinion, we all do, but if you "bend" the facts to support your opinion, you'll be called on it. Not too unreasonable, I think.
Funny, oddly enough, it seems that those who love to "bend" the facts don't understand that when their "bent" truths are displayed their "bending" always closes the minds of exactly those who the "bender" wants most to listen. The choir, of course, are already believers.
Is it so hard to have a position or make a point without resorting to this deliberate, er, "bending?"
btw, imo, as PIL posts this particuar "bent" truth about, I don't know, 50x/day, I don't think it can reasonably be construed as a "stray incorrect fact."

Sarc-mixing threads? sounds uncharacteristically poetic from a civilian number casualty apoligist. Marla Ruzicka killed while counting would have been help here. Do you really think that Bush should continue to model the callous attitude, aped by you here, here toward dead Iraq civilians? How come his heartrendering compassionate pleas to free the Iraqis fell silent regarding their liberated status as collateral damage? He just will not discuss loss. Does that make him a winner?

I don't blame Bush supporters for not wanting to talk about Bush.
You know I've been posting comments since the war and occupation began. During the early phase of the war, you saw alot of true believers. They were writing things like it was just a matter of time before we would find the WMDs that Saddam had hidden away, complaining about the press for not emphasizing the major accomplishments being made in Iraq, and, of course, victory was just around the corner.
These true believers wouldn't have stood by and let anyone say anything disparaging about George Bush, including accusing him of "mood swings". However, with each new revelation, the wind has gradually been taken out of their sails. I don't know if Bush is crazy but I do know that his March of Folly into Iraq was madness. And the true believers cheered him on every step of the way. It must be hard to come to the realization that your truth is all lies. I'd almost feel sorry for them if it wasn't for the 1800 Americans killed in Iraq.

"I think Paul was wrong about the number of civilian casualties (his source was probably the Lancet report in October 2004)"
No, the Lancet study put the numbers in a range up to 200,000, and down to something like 60,000.
The Lancet study did NOT include Fallujah (or Al-Qa'im or other pogroms since).
This later survey was of family members, so it is based on survivors' reports. If the whole family or whole block was leveled, there would be no report, so the 128,000 is probably low.
The pogrom on Fallujah was PLENTY to reach the bar of genocide. After 4 Blackwater mercs were killed, international law REQUIRES an inquest, not bombing the civilian population, which is racist (collective guilt theory).
Racist actions and pogroms on civilians is not legal. But neither are wars of aggression, illegal invasions, failure to protect civilians from nuclear materials by failing to guard nuke dumps, as well as a long list of major war crimes which the USPNAC conspirators have committed.
Go ahead and justify it in your own heads, but the science so far supports much higher numbers than can be found IN THE PRESS, which is the source of the other, far lower numbers that you *ssholes use to get to sleep at night.
The press is unable to document the great majority of what is going on, even with the sacrifice of nearly 70 members of the press to date.

128,000 Iraqi Civilian Casualties
United Press International
(July 12, 2005) — An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.
Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.
'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.
The number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im. 'Iraqiyun's figures conflict with the Iraqi Body Count public database compiled by Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. According to the Graduate Institute of International Studies' database, 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since March 2003.

Iraqi Body Count's numbers come only from press reports, as they readily note. Their coverage is NOT a scientific estimate or the results of a survey, but only a (highly-irregular) sample.

Good for you Paul. The accusation was that you pulled your number of Iraqi civilian deaths out of the air and you've produced a source.
Speaking of "bending" the facts, is that anything like "fixing" the facts and intelligence around a policy?

You know, I’m going to call BS. So, we have one (to be generous) dubious ‘high-level aid’, reports that he is on antidepressants (I know an entire MD residency program that is as well), and a remote diagnosis from a left wing shrink (interesting parallels to the Frist/Shaivo business).

Sounds like both "dry drunks" in my extended (thankfully far-extended) in my family.
The one who went through "recovery therapy" is much more stable, and a pleasure to be around. The other two...well, the description above is pretty close. She calls them "white-knuckled drunks".
Hopefully Shrub can keep dry. No one, even him, deserves that hell. Besides, our international image is in enough trouble as it is.

"An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003. [snip] the toll includes everyone [my emphasis] who has been killed since that time"
"He has killed 130,000+ civilians"... PIL
The 128,000 number is based on a (innaccurate, as they all are) guesstimate of all Iraqs who have died - including soldiers and "insurgents" as well as civilians. Nice try at "bending" the truth.
Still waiting for the link to "130,000+ civilians" killed as a direct result of combat or combat-related armed violence.
Most less-biased sources guesstimate the number of civilian deaths in the 25,000 - 40,000 range. As even your own quote points out.
Sad thing is, even "just" 40,000 is a horrific number. It's more than the population of my town. Can you imagine seeing 40,000 caskets lined up in a row? Isn't that number big enough for you to make your point?

Posted by john horse: "Good for you Paul. The accusation was that you pulled your number of Iraqi civilian deaths out of the air and you've produced a source."
I didn't invent the quote, I read it reported.
"Still waiting for the link to "130,000+ civilians" killed as a direct result of combat or combat-related armed violence."
Wait on. I didn't say anything of the sort. But the fact is that under international law, an occupier has a series of legal burdens. Protecting civilian life is the primary one. If 50,000 civilians die from a smallpox outbreak, that's the fault of the occupier, if it can be linked to, for instance, BOMBING CIVILIAN WATER SUPPLIES, which is ILLEGAL.
So the point is not the 'horrificness' of the number. It's WHO IS TO BLAME, who has the duty to protect, and that's the occupier. This occupier IS A RACIST, and couldn't care less about international law, when profit is at issue.
In other words, realpolitik. LACK of ethics. LACK of respect for human rights. LACK of legal duties.
Splattering women against their kitchen walls is horrific. Bombing cities and destroying nearly half of the buildings is horrific. Using incendiary bombs on civilian populations is horrific.
War crimes; genocide.
All of this done to a disarmed country over lies -- more than horrific, it's TREASON.
The quoted Iraqi study is not a 'guesstimate.' It is a survey of family REPORTS of lost family-members. Since these family members were killed during an illegal invasion, those that were working as soldiers or now fighting as PATRIOTS are also illegally killed. The point is the same.
There is no justification under international law for wars of aggression to establish airbases and oil domination.

PIL you know as well as I do that when you deliberatly use the term "130,000+ civilians" most people think you are speaking of peaceful citizenry cooking dinner for their families or playing with their families or some such.
Your definition of "civilians," however, includes the combatants (of whom the guesstimates are that about 100,000 have been killed).
This is "bending" in my book.